The Bard Of Mill Woods | Collin Doyle gave his Sterling-winning play The Mighty Carlins a Mill Woods setting, and he returned there with his script for Routes.
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Collin Doyle’s new play is called Routes — he rhymes it with “doubts,” he says, to make sure nobody thinks he’s writing about his slave ancestors — and he was given a pretty specific road map to follow while writing it.
“Concrete Theatre came to me about three years ago,” Doyle says, “ and they said, ‘We want a one-person play for teenage boys about teen violence.’ Essentially they wanted a male version of The Shape of a Girl.”
Like Joan MacLeod’s play (a fictionalized version of the Reena Virk case, and a staple of YA theatre companies across North America), Doyle was inspired by a real-life incident: the 2006 altercation on board a Mill Woods bus that ended in the accidental death of passenger Stefan Conley. Doyle’s protagonist, played by Joshua Beaudry, is a bystander to the violence, a teen aimlessly riding the bus to escape his violent home life.
“Everyone [in these kinds of altercations] believes they’re in the right,” Doyle says. “It’s hard to know how to stop bullying, especially when no matter what you do, it all comes down to the same kind of violence. The only message I can offer is empathy — to try to understand the other’s person’s position.
“And to tell a good story,” he quickly adds. “I’m always trying to do that.”
Routes runs Nov. 5-7 at Catalyst Theatre.
Routes isn’t the only play from a local actor-turned-playwright hitting the stage this weekend: George Szilagyi’s Hockey Stories for Boys is being revived at Avenue Theatre, where it’ll run from Nov. 6-15.
The play is an affectionate comedy-drama about a pair of down-and-out friends who set out on a simultaneously pathetic yet noble cross-country mission to reclaim the Stanley Cup from the NHL. The show has been a true labour of love for Szilagyi, who’s shepherded it through two previous incarnations — he calls this one the “hat trick” production. He’s even cast his wife, actress Sharla Matkin, as the ghost of Bill Barilko. Is that touch creepy or endearing? Only people who see the play can say for sure.
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